Just received my new Dolphin Dynamic

[Tredge]

Plopped it in and let her go.....then I spent 2 hours getting it to go out of the deep end and it never made any progress on the walls.

I must say I'm dissapointed. The reviews made it seem to be an excellent little machine, but I dont see that it will do much better than a manual vaccum and so far takes more time.

If I have to pick it up and move it around with the remote, scrub the walls myself, and clean the machine every cycle.....I dont save any time. Thankfully I have the remote or it'd be next to worthless.

I have 0 obstacles in my pool, not even a ladder. Its a simple rectangular pool, nothing special.

Did I make a $1,000 mistake or am I doing things wrong?

[cruzmisl]

I have a Dolphin Diagnostic (one model below) and it has worked well for 3 years. I gave that one to my Dad and also ordered a Dynamic but haven't received it yet. I know there are different settings on that unit where it can do just the floor, floor and walls etc and can adjust the time. Also you may want to play with the top handle and the floats to see if that helps. I found if mine was on an angle it did the best job. I also found the best cleaning with both floats on the side of the cord.

Don't give up so easily, they really are a great product.
Joe

[Tredge]

Thanks, I tried removing the floats and just adding one but I'll try putting them both on the cord side.

I dont plan to give up.
Maybe my expectations were too high

[cruzmisl]

It took me a bit to get the right combo for my pool but I eventually got it. Try all variations and see what works best. Good luck.

[oliverw]

I just got the Dolphin Dynamic about 2 weeks ago and I felt the same way you do the first time I put it in the water. I set it all up and put it in the water at night and pull it out the next morning and I too was not impressed. It missed lots of debri all over the floor of the pool and I was ready to return it, but thought to give it another try. The next time I put it in, it did a great job and got almost everything. The filter bag showed that it was working much better. I put it in again last night and will see what kind of job it did this time, I still have time to return it if I feel it's not living up to it's cost. I'll post what I find tonight.

oliverw

[troykristoffer]

I just got my Dolphin Diagnostic too, and the first time I ran it, I supervised it regularly and at first I was convinced there was something wrong, because it would NOT climb the walls, whatsoever. It was going up the slope on the sides barely a couple inches and then reversing and going the other way and it did that for at least 3 hours, so I was very skeptic and thinking I wasted my money. But I pulled it out, inspected it for setting controls and found now... decided...one more try... again, no wall climbing...

Until... I kinda of forgot about it and about 5 hours later, went back and was delighted to find that it was scouring the top edge of my pool!

It seems that climbing the walls is just about the last thing it will do in it's cycle, so maybe if you let it go, it will eventually do its job. Of course it *could* be defective, but theres my experience.

[derrikm]

I got a Dolphin Advantage last Christmas. I live in San Antonio and never "close" my pool. I dropped it into the pool on Christmas day and it went to work right away, covering all areas of the bottom, climbing the walls and scrubbing the tile. My pool is 10.000 gal, basically oval, with stairs and a large swimout. The Dolphin even cleaned the two lower stairs and the swimout. I have a cartridge filter and the cloth bag that came with the Dolphin definately has improved water clarity. A few weeks ago I use a few pummace tile stones on some problem areas of my tile. As you might know, those things can leave a pretty good mess in the bottom of the pool. I just dropped the Dolphin in and a few hours later all the gritty mess was picked up.

So far I am 100% happy with it and I've used it about once per week ever since Late December.

DerrikM

[cleancloths]

I too recently bought a dynamic based on some of the positive comments here. It does a good job, but I have caught it repeating the same sections over and over. Also the bag is a pain in the ass to clean compared with my polaris. But it does do a good job.

[rak70]

I just bought the Dolphin Diagnostic and I too at first was not sure if something was wrong with it.

My pool is a double round like a figure 8 with a sharp transition from the deep to shallow end. After the first run I found it only got the deep end and maybe 10% of the shallow. Called technical support and hey told me to place the handle at max position opposite each other and move both of the floats to the side of the power cord. This 'seems' to have worked for me. Put it in last night at 7:00 and this morning it looks like it covered most of the pool 90-95% or so. Technical support also informed me that the Dolphin does not always try to reach the waterline. Sometimes it will only go up partially then quickly reverse, this according to them is normal.

[Tredge]

Update:

Last night I let it run through a cycle and used the non-cloth bag this time...not sure if that makes a difference or not.

I also moved the floats to the cord side of the machine.

It climbed walls this time! It covered roughly 60% of the pool (I can tell because I have a fine sediment I'm hoping to get cleared up)

Moving the location of the power supply seems to impact its coverage area significantly.

So....it looks like it will clean most of the pool, but it might take several cycles to do it.

My expectation was that I could let this thing run once or twice ever 2 weeks and keep a relatively clean pool. This isnt the case.
It makes me wonder about the aquabot turbo claims that it will cover the entire pool in 1 hour.